


Lost Souls and Reverie

by just_passing_bi



Series: It's Not Easy Having Yourself a Good Time [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Arson, Blood, F/F, F/M, Gay Disaster Beauregard (Critical Role), Gen, Happy Murder Family, M/M, Matricide, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Other, Patricide, The Gentleman - Freeform, Yasha's here now, mild body horror, more so than usual, semi cannibalism, sword swallowing, the ritual succeeded, theyre all disasters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-08-19 14:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_passing_bi/pseuds/just_passing_bi
Summary: They are all very broken people. Caleb knows this well. It's in moments like these, right after a battle, that the full extent of it really hits him.A look at a dark!au Mighty Nein through Caleb's eyes. Contains spoilers through episode 33.





	1. The Mighty Nein

**Author's Note:**

> Years have passed and I'm finally back, this time in a different dnd podcast fandom.
> 
> This is an AU, and it's a bit darker than the canon universe. Please look at tags and warnings. Contains spoilers up to and including C2 E33 (Though not much after ep 18 except for Jester's dad). Title is from Renegades by X Ambassadors.  
> Warnings: semi-cannibalism (descriptions of a humanoid eating other humanoisd of a different species), lots of blood, some cursing, references to injury and violence, reference to past patricide/matricide.

They are all very broken people.  
  
Caleb knows this well. He sees it every day, in every member of their party, no matter what face they put on. When they’re out in public, it’s less obvious- civilization requires a certain level of decency that most of them can pretend to meet. But when it’s just them, their true colors begin to peek through. He knows they’re all broken, but it’s in moments like these, right after a battle, that the full extent of it really hits him.  
  
He’s leaning against the wall of the ramshackle building they broke into, trying to catch his breath. It was a rough fight, and everyone took a few hits. It’s enough to make him concerned for his companions, but Nott is always the first that his attention goes to. They’ve been together the longest, far before they met the others in Zedash, and it’s become habit to seek her out, to check if she’s alright. She must be, because instead of seeking out medical attention from Jester, she’s sunken her teeth into a nearby body. It’s a young, broad-shouldered man, slumped in a corner, and she’s tearing into the flesh with both nails and teeth. The way she devours him is vicious, animalistic, and it still catches him off-guard sometimes. She’s very intelligent for a goblin, and often childlike in both nature and stature. It distracts him from the blood of a cruel creature running through her veins, until it is in full display in instances such as these. Goblins eat humans; it’s a well-known fact, used to scare children into behaving. He had heard it countless times in his youth, wrapped up in bedtime stories, and it had made him fear her at first when they ended up in a cell together. Eating humans is something that goblins can’t help, and no matter how much Nott tries to separate herself from her species, that desire lays under her skin too. He never faulted her for it, though- he knows what it is like to have an itch that needs to be scratched. If at that time it had meant giving up a few mouthfuls of himself when they were trapped in a cell together, then her quick fingers and fierce loyalty had long since made up for such a minor sacrifice.  
  
Now, though, they’re getting jobs from the Gentleman on a semi-regular basis, and they give her access to enough corpses to satiate her hunger, so her needs don’t pose an issue anymore. She’s a valuable member of their group, so no one wants her to leave, which means they’ve learned to accept her goblin… _tendencies_ as a normal, or at least expected, part of their travels.  
  
Caleb watches Nott for a minute longer, but then she’s cracking open the dead man’s skull with a heavy stone to reach his brain (the tastiest part, according to her), and it becomes a bit too much for him to comfortably watch. Satisfied that she’s alright, Caleb turns to Fjord next. That too is a mistake. Fjord’s head is thrown back, hands grasping the hilt of a glimmering sword that’s already halfway down his throat. Rivulets of blood are running out of his open mouth and down the sides of his face, but he keeps pushing it down, inches at a time, eyes staring into nothing and everything. It’s disturbing to watch, even though Caleb knows the blood is from superficial wounds and the blade is being absorbed within him before reaching anything vital. Fjord used to hate doing _this_ (Jester teasingly refers to it as “deepthroating”, much to Fjord’s chagrin) in front of them, back when they were all still new to each other. Now, it seems like he almost enjoys it, revels in the half-disgusted, half-delighted squeals from Jester and the heavy-lidded looks from Mollymauk. In reality, he probably doesn’t even notice their reactions, too focused on his acquisition of power.  
  
Fjord finally gets the whole sword down and closes his eyes, head still flung back. He moans softly, completely still except for his heaving chest, and then his eyes are open and the falchion is in his hand.  
  
“That was _so cool_ ,” Jester gushes, running closer to him. Caleb thinks she’s addressing Fjord, but it’s hard to tell, since her eyes are fixed on the falchion.  
  
“Yeah,” Fjord croaks. His face flushes slightly and he rubs at the back of his neck. He too is staring at the falchion. He swings it back and forth a few times, both of their eyes tracking its movement, and he grins. There is something _more_ in his eyes, and for a second Caleb could swear they flash to yellow. He knows Fjord gets off on this, on the power he’s steadily accumulating with each unique weapon he consumes. They all know. Caleb might have been worried about the man’s loyalty if he wasn’t so rooted in protective instincts.  
  
(Him being head-over-heels for Jester didn’t hurt matters either. Caleb has to look away when their silent worship of the falchion turns into worship of each other, making out amidst a room of corpses, Fjord’s blood smearing across both of their faces.)  
  
As he begins to survey the room, he and Mollymauk make eye contact for a second and his gut twists sharply, but then Beau is approaching him.  
“Yo, Caleb,” Beau says. She spits out a mouthful of blood onto the body of a man that had gotten a few good hits on her. Her mouth stretches wide into a grin, and he can see her teeth are coated in red. “That was fucking _awesome_.”  
  
Caleb nods in agreement. He likes Beau, despite her asshole predisposition, but he’s still trying to figure her out. At first, he pinned her as a more extreme form of adrenaline junkie, desperate to sink her fists into something. Her criminal contacts and odd, undefined connection to the Cobalt Soul muddles this theory, though. Sometimes he wonders if she’s not as complicated as he’s making her out to be, but then he’ll see her in battle, see the burning determination in her face, hear her laugh when an enemy lands a hit, watch the deliberateness behind every blow. It’s these little things that makes him scrap that. Now, though, she seems decidedly uncomplicated: just a barely-adult with a recently fulfilled bloodlust.  
  
“We found some weird magic shit,” she tells him with her usual level of eloquence. “Jester put it into the bag. She said she won’t give it to her dad if it’s anything we want to keep.”  
  
And there was another oddball in the group- Jester, the Tiefling daughter of the Gentleman, far too cheerful for someone whose father is a criminal overlord. The first time they ran an errand for the Gentleman, Jester had tagged along, insisting they would need a healer. They had begrudgingly accepted, scared of upsetting someone so close to the Gentleman. She ended up not doing much healing, but she had clicked into place like she’d been there all along. She loved to flirt with Fjord until he was a dark shade of green, and tease Mollymauk in a way that made him amused, and had quickly befriended a stubborn Beau and social pariah Nott. Even Caleb had to admit he cared for her in his own way, despite how little they knew each other. She was good at that. She put on a sweet, naïve demeanor that caught people off-guard and then smashed them into a pulp with a giant spectral lollipop.  
  
Even with the level of affection they all felt towards her, and the extent to which she was useful to the group, there had been some reluctance at accepting her into their clusterfuck. She was the daughter of the Gentleman, after all, and surely her loyalties would lie with him. But she had lied to his face so they could keep their magical findings to themselves. Her father could tell she was lying, but he seemed more amused than anything, and gave her his blessing to keep travelling with them. (Not that she would have left them if he’d said to; it was nearly impossible to talk Jester out of something she wants to do.)  
  
“Ja, I will look at them when we get back,” Caleb finally replies, and watches Beau limp over to Jester to get the gash in her side healed.  
  
Caleb pushes off the wall with a sigh. He rolls his shoulders, listens to them crack, and groans when the movement tugs on a few cuts he got on his abdomen. They don’t feel serious, and no blood is seeping through his coat, so he puts off going to Jester and begins his own post-battle ritual. He starts with the foyer of the house and pats down the corpse in there, checking for a pulse and turning out the pockets. He finds a few coins and an old sword, keeping the money and leaving the weapon. From there, he goes to the next room, and the next, searching every room of the house and all the bodies they’ve left in their wake. It’s a filthy, dilapidated building, so he isn’t surprised when there isn’t much to find, but he’s up to a dozen or so gold by the time he gets back to the room. It’s slow-going, despite the sparseness, but he enjoys how methodical it is. He’s so wrapped up in it that he doesn’t even realize Molly’s been following him until he’s almost done. He stands up slowly, counting out a handful of coins by touch, and turns to face Mollymauk.  
  
The purple Tiefling is lounging in the doorframe, looking artfully debauched despite just finishing fighting for his life. His clothes are spattered in blood, some of it his own, and he’s paused in wiping the dripping scarlet from his scimitars to watch him. Caleb instinctually drops his gaze.   
  
While everyone in their party has secrets and scar tissue, Mollymauk is a whole other type of odd. Sometimes, he seems completely average, aside from his gaudy appearance and eerie eye tattoos, but other times, it becomes apparent that he is not quite normal. He doesn’t know how to describe it, but it’s like there’s something more to Mollymauk, something besides blood and bones under his skin, and whatever it is, it seems to not quite fit within the confines of flesh. It bleeds into the air around him, a tangible quality that makes the hairs of Caleb’s neck stand up. Whatever Molly is, it’s not what he claims to be. Normal mortals don’t give off auras, or leak black sludge, or summon light and darkness by drawing blood. Yes, it’s useful to have him around in a fight, and yes, he’s an asset to their team, but he clearly is something other, and it makes it hard for Caleb to trust him. There’s no way the rest of his companions haven’t noticed it yet, but while they do occasionally act uneasy around him, no one else seems as deeply unsettled by it all. Or maybe Caleb _is_ the only one who’s picked up on it. Maybe it takes a monster to recognize one.  
  
“Need any help?” Molly asks. His voice has that familiar lilt to it, a stark contrast to the inhuman hissing that made their enemies bleed.  
  
“Nein, I am almost done,” Caleb answers, and Molly smirks at him, tail swinging languidly behind him.  
  
“Found anything interesting?” he continues, taking a step closer to Caleb, and then another. They weren’t far apart to begin with, but now there is only a few feet separating them.  
  
From this proximity, Caleb can smell the combination of ozone and sulfur and dust that clings to the tiefling. It feels like he is standing in front of something old and massive, like ancient ruins or a temple to a fickle god. He swallows.   
  
“Nein.” His voice is hoarse. “Some gold, but that is it. Beauregard said Jester found some magical items. Maybe you should talk to her.”  
  
“Maybe I should,” he agrees. His tail flicks. He does not blink. Then he is walking away, and the scent leaves with him.  
  
After this, it doesn’t take much longer for the party to gather what they want and leave the building. Caleb lingers for only a moment, taking one last look at the scattering of corpses, before heading to the front door. Nott is waiting for him, and she flashes him a grin when he reaches her. She’s covered in blood, and there are bits of human in her mouth, but Caleb is used to the sight by now. He gives her a small smile in return before taking her sticky hand in his.  
  
“Do you feel better now, _Schatz_?” The Zemnian term of endearment slips out without thought.  
  
“Oh, yes!” she responds. The two of them walk out the front door together, and slowly begin to approach the rest, who have gathered a little ways from the house. Nott uses her free hand to pull her mask back up, leaving bloody fingerprints on the white porcelain. Caleb makes a silent note to himself that they all need to get cleaned up before heading back into town; most people don’t react well to a group of bloodstained, heavily armed strangers strolling into their settlement. “Plenty of meat! Jester even let me put a leg in the bag of holding, for later. And most of it wasn’t burnt. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” she hastily adds. “You’re such a powerful wizard, Caleb, and it’s _so cool_ how you can burn people like that!”  
  
“Not as cool as when I punched that dude to death!” Beau chimes in, pausing her conversation with Fjord to say so, because of course she has to top him. “Did you see that? I think I broke his neck!”  
  
Nott and Beau begin squabbling good-naturedly, and then Jester is insisting that, no, staves are _not_ cooler than spiritual weapons, Beau, and Caleb fights the urge to smile. He still has one last duty, and it’s arguably the most important. He takes a deep breath, tuning out the immature argument around him, and turns his focus inward.  
  
Like always, the fire is easy to find. It smolders right underneath his skin, demanding to be let out, ready to be called forth at any time. He reaches into the pockets of his coat and withdraws the proper components. They are a familiar weight in his hand. Then he is crushing them in his hand and muttering the necessary words, and fire streaks out from him, towards the house. It explodes upon impact with the building, taking out part of the roof, and the old wood _ignites_. He watches the flames begin to spread. A familiar sensation creeps up his spine, somewhere between dread and desire. There is a quiet buzzing in his ears that grows louder with every passing second. It sounds almost like screams. He repeats the spell a second time, and then a third, and it is only Nott’s hand squeezing his that reminds him not to waste any more spell slots. He watches the fire build, slowly beginning to consume the house. Its roar feels defeaning. Everything else is drowned out by the inferno, and briefly, it is just him and the flames, staring at each other, over a decade ago. He’s coughing on smoke and indecision and his home is burning with his parents inside and he is burning too, burning from the inside out, and from these ashes he is _rising_ , consumed by adrenaline and power. His parents are screaming but he is laughing, because something in him has broken, but it broke in such a delicious way, and his heart is racing in his chest and blood is pumping through his veins and he is alive and-  
  
“Caleb!” a voice is saying, and for a second he thinks its his parents calling out to him, but no, it’s Nott, grasping his hand and staring up at him with concern. She must have been trying to get his attention for a while. “Are you ready to leave?”  
  
Caleb stares into the blaze in front of him. Most of the house has caught, and he threw enough fireballs at it to ensure the bodies will burn with the structure. His heart is thudding inside his ribcage, and he has to drag his gaze away from the monster in front of him. He absently notes that everyone is giving him a look, somewhere between worry and suspicion, and it makes his skin itch.  
  
“Ja.” His voice sounds raw, like he’s been screaming, and has a fuzzy quality to it like he is listening from a distance.  
  
“Alright, then,” Fjord says, “Mighty Nein, let’s move out.”  
  
And they all start down the road, talking and joking and laughing, leaving the evidence of their actions behind them in a blazing inferno.  
  
They are all very broken people, Caleb knows. Sometimes he wonders if he is the most broken of them all.


	2. Yasha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back at their bullshit!  
> I actually meant to post this a while ago, but it completely slipped my mind. This is an additional piece I wrote about how Yasha fits into this AU.  
> Warnings: a little bit of blood and violence, a bit of cursing

The first time she came, it was on a fair-weathered night, arriving in a flurry of violence and darkness to a battle the Mighty Nein were losing.  
  
They were ambushed by an orc hunting party while setting up camp. Orcs by themselves shouldn’t have been so difficult to take on, but they had exhausted themselves during a skirmish with bandits earlier that day. Caleb was almost completely out of spells, to the point of seriously considering drawing his dagger, despite his ineptitude with a blade. He was forced to back up even further to stay out of the fray, ending pressed against a thin tree on the edge of the woods behind him. He frantically tracked the members of his party, first searching for Nott as always. She was taking cover behind a half-rotted log a hundred or so feet away, firing off crossbow bolts and trying not to draw attention. She was close enough to flee into the forest if necessary, which was enough of a relief for him to move onto the next order of business.  
  
Fjord was sprawled out on the ground. At first Caleb feared he had been killed, but Jester’s desperation to reach him was nowhere near what it would have been, had he been dead. She was facing off against two orcs, trying to disengage long enough to heal Fjord, but neither of the beasts were letting her. Beau and Molly were still up, thank the gods, but only just; both were bloodied and breathing heavily, stuck fending off against multiple assailants. Caleb was just about to use his last spell, beginning to craft a plan to grab Nott and flee, when she arrived.  
  
One second, it was just them against the orcs, and the next, she was there, running onto the battlefield, armed with a massive greatsword. Caleb tracked her movement until she stopped in the middle of the fray. Then she was standing still amongst the fighting, and she was screaming: a feral, bloodcurdling _roar_ , like a strike of thunder, perhaps, or the voice of a vengeful god. Time seemed to slow, and Caleb watched with a horrified fascination as two monstrous black wings erupted from her back and spread into the air, as if she was preparing to take flight. Darkness sprung into existence around her, and for a terrible moment, Caleb truly believed they had been visited by an angel of death.  
  
(Even now, after learning her name and becoming more familiar with her, Caleb thinks there’s some truth in that initial conclusion.)  
  
A second later, the fight resumed as normal, but the momentum had shifted. She was plowing through orcs in a way that could be described as brutal, inhuman. It sent goosebumps up and down Caleb’s arms. It was a breathtaking display of fury, and by the time the last orc was felled by her wicked sword, all eyes were on her. The entire Mighty Nein stared, transfixed, at their savior, watching her shoulders heave and sword fall limp at her side.  
  
“Holy _fuck_ ,” Caleb heard Beau say. She was standing slack-jawed, eyes burning with begrudging respect and fiery lust. Her exclamation broke the fragile stillness. Caleb snorted quietly. Beau was comfortingly predictable in that way. She had a type: women who would certainly be bad for her, and women who could easily kill her. This woman clearly fit the latter, and Caleb predicted she’d fit the former as well.  
  
“Er, sorry about that,” the stranger muttered. “I, uh, I was passing through, and. Saw a fight.” She cleared her throat, eyes focused on her feet. “Thought I could help, maybe.”  
  
Caleb frowned at that. Though she seemed to be entirely truthful, he couldn’t help but doubt her. They had been setting up camp off the beaten path; unless she had been quite lost, or wandering far further from the road than any lone traveler sensibly would, there was little chance of her seeing them, especially in the dim light. He decided not to call her out on it- she had just saved all of them, and he wasn’t keen to agitate a clearly powerful warrior.  
  
“Thank you for that,” Fjord said earnestly. He was still looking battered, but Jester had reached him in time to heal him. He had a similar look on his face as Beau- respect and admiration, but without any of the desire.  
  
“Yeah,” Beau echoed. Her mouth was still hanging open. “That was- really badass. Are you an angel? Not in a, ‘you’re hot’, type of way- not that you’re not hot, you’re super hot-”  
  
Caleb cut off her rambling, pulling out the bit of Celestial he knew to ask, “But really, are you an angel?”  
  
The stranger huffed at the question, as if it were ridiculous, despite the wings they had all seen emerge from her back and her understanding of the language of celestial beings. “I am not an angel. My name is Yasha.”  
  
The conversation continued for a while longer before the encroaching darkness spurred them on to finish setting up their camp. Yasha volunteered to help, which led to Beau eagerly inviting Yasha to spend the night with them. Safety in numbers and all that shit, she reasoned, and it could have been believable if it weren’t for the way she stumbled over her words and stared wide-eyed at Yasha the entire time. Watching Beau try to interact with hot, badass women was a consistent source of amusement, and it distracted from Caleb’s wariness at allowing a stranger such easy access to their sleeping forms. However, no one protested Beau’s proposal, or Yasha’s hesitant acceptance- it seemed rude to detract that offer to their savior, and it didn’t seem likely that she’d go through the trouble of rescuing them only to kill them in their sleep. Still, it was a relief to wake up in the morning, no more harmed than the orc fight had left them, and with all their belongings.  
  
Caleb expected it to be a one-time thing: show some courtesy to the deadly warrior who saved their _Hinterteile_ , then move on in the morning as usual. That was not how it went. Yasha just- didn’t leave, and no one asked her to. She traveled with them that day, claiming she had been heading that direction anyway. And the next day. The group was intrigued by her, it seemed. Jester was thrilled, Fjord was impressed, Beau was head-over-heels, and even Nott warmed up to her after Yasha accepted her tentative gift of pretty flowers. Even Molly was being genuinely sincere, instead of his usual flirting and lies. It didn’t last long, though- on the third night, a storm blew in from the west, and Yasha slipped off into the night. Beau especially was disappointed, but they continued on, and after a day or two, their thoughts had completely returned to their mission on-hand.  
  
After some time, it became apparent that Yasha wasn’t so easy to get rid of: during their return trip to Zedash, they once again crossed paths with her, and again she vanished that night with an arriving storm. Later, they found her in the Evening Nip, and traveled together for nearly a week before another storm seemed to sweep her away. (Caleb quickly noticed this pattern and made a mental note of it. And when had storms become so frequent in this part of the Empire? It was odd, and something he would have to look into further.) If Caleb was one to believe in fate, he’d say she was destined to join their haphazard group. She kept appearing and disappearing sporadically, but they started alerting her of their travel plans and expecting to see her along the way. Jester used Sending on the days her magic wasn’t depleted to keep Yasha updated. She became an unofficial member of the Mighty Nein. Even Caleb took a liking to her eventually, despite a mutual level of distrust. He continued to be wary of Yasha, and of what it meant that she’d become connected to them.  
  
After all, Aasimars, even ( _especially_ ) when fallen, are a horrible force to be reckoned with, and a dark angel following a band of mortals seemed an awful lot like an omen of death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been tossing around ideas for a dark caduceus, so hopefully I’ll have another chapter soon! My life has been wild lately due to health issues, but it’s finally winding down a bit so I should have more time to write.   
> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking about expanding this further and including a part about how Yasha fits into this universe, and maybe Caduceus as well. I don't know, what do you all think?  
> I really appreciate any kudos and comments you leave! Feedback is wonderful!


End file.
